What we do

As a global and diversified mining business, we use the latest technologies to find new resources, plan and build our mines and mine, process, move and market our products – from bulk commodities and base metals to precious metals and diamonds – to our customers around the world.

For almost 100 years, we have been mining the minerals that society needs to develop and prosper. We provide our investors with a balanced portfolio of opportunities as we find, plan and build, mine, process, move and market to our customers a diversified and high quality range of products, spanning bulk commodities, base metals and minerals, and precious metals and minerals.

Find

Our geologists search for and discover new sources of the minerals that make our modern lives possible. To be a responsible company, we must find deposits we can develop and mine in a safe and sustainable way. Technology is expanding the frontiers of mining, so the search takes us into many more remote and extreme environments.

In 2014, we carried out exploration work in 19 countries. We have regional exploration teams focused on key mineral belts with central oversight on commodity and project priorities. Our Exploration hub offices are co-located within commodity businesses so we can draw upon shared capabilities as part of a coordinated, collaborative strategy.

Our search falls into two categories: greenfield exploration to find entirely new resources, and brownfield exploration to identify additional resources close to existing operations.

We benefit from developing and using world-class expertise and leading technologies, often that we have developed ourselves. We use geological, geochemical, geophysical and remote sensing tools to find deposits hidden deep beneath the earth’s surface, and a range of airborne technologies to map out regional geological structures, with advanced software to process the data.

Plan and build

Before we put a spade in the ground, our geologists and engineers work together using virtual mine planning systems to design the most effective, cost efficient, environmentally sound construction and operational mine plan. This work can take several years, depending on the complexities of the ore body, the physical environment of the site, its location relative to power and energy supplies and the route to market. We don’t only plan for the life cycle of the mine, but take great care to look beyond and determine the rehabilitation of the site and the real benefits that the local communities will continue to benefit from. The technologies we use to plan and build and rehabilitate help us get it right first time, which minimises our environmental footprint while also safeguarding precious cash resources.

Mine

In extracting the products that we all need in our daily lives, we draw on almost 100 years of mining experience. Safety comes first: our whole way of working is focused on zero harm. We plan for the lifecycle of the mine and beyond and use our own technologies for reducing waste and protecting environments.

Process

By processing, converting and refining our raw materials we produce what customers need. As well as creating new products, our processing technologies enable us to reduce waste, save water, increase efficiency, drive innovation and, by adding value to our products, support economic growth in the areas we mine.

Processing begins with removing as much waste as possible, often using huge crushers to reduce the size of the material to help recover the valuable minerals from the ore.

We then concentrate the minerals using a range of processes that depend on the type of ore. For example, we use gravity separation for coal, which is lighter than the waste rock, while copper can be separated using a flotation process.

Move and market

Having been processed, we then transport often enormous volumes – particularly in the cases of iron ore and coal – of our products to where they are needed, to our customers. We use the latest logistics technologies to co-ordinate and optimise our global shipping needs to deliver on time, every time. And we use our scale and detailed knowledge of the markets for our products to offer our customers a stable supply at their exact specifications – adding value every step of the way.

From your smartphone to life-saving medication, from hybrid vehicles to remarkable jewellery, our products make all the difference to all of our lives.